Like a waking dream, Three Children has the quality of being simultaneously
real and imaginary. And this play, written by acclaimed Malaysian
playwright Leow Puay Tin, may leave you afterward with the curious feeling
that you saw something that didn't really happen, that you're remembering an
event you couldn't possibly have experienced.

That is, in many ways, the point of this latest production from the
Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret. That this show - like the company's
previous entry this season, Most Happy - is being presented upstairs at
Bennigan's on 47th Street is almost a surreal joke: The table and chairs
that surround the makeshift playing space encourage the feeling of
community, of shared history so important to the play, but also
unintentionally invoke the sense of being in the right place at the wrong
time, or the wrong place at the right time, to meet the central characters.

None of whom, it should be mentioned, exist any longer. They've been
replaced by their adult counterparts, who ride off on their horses in search
of spiritual cleansing, "a house on a hill" or "a well of sweet water." But
such renewed life and meaning isn't easily found, and on their long,
apparently fruitless journey, the three constantly drift in and out of the
memories of their own pasts and the lives of the people who once lived along
Kappan Road in the Malaysian town of Malacca.

As this series of usually spiritual but generally plotless stories unfolds,
a picture gradually emerges of a people and a way of life that no longer
exist. Memory is paramount: It's the only way these people and events can
be preserved. Assuming, that is, they ever existed in the first place - the
way the play is written and structured, with a great deal of repetitive,
rhythmic dialogue punctuated by beats and gongs from onstage drummer Yuan
Peng Cheng, you can never be absolutely sure what really happened and what's
only a product of oral history.

The playwright at times seems to argue that there's no discernible
difference. Director Alec Tok has even staged the production with this
concept in mind - he utilizes every inch of the available playing area to
create eerily beautiful stage pictures and takes advantage of the venue's
natural acoustics (or lack thereof) to create an uneven texture of sound
that gives every spoken line a "five seconds ago" sound. Hypnotic lighting
(from Mahayana Landowne) abruptly shifts your attention from the fantasies
in which the three actors are appearing to an earthbound offstage narrator,
who pops up at several points to offer his own insights into the experiences
of the "children."

But if Tok impresses his ability to amplify the surroundings' smallest
imperfections to create an alternate universe of a playing space, the text
itself demands still more than he can provide. While a longer throughline
or two occasionally pops up in different guises, most characters appear for
only a couple of minutes before vanishing into the mists of memory. This
makes keeping track of what's happening to whom at any given time a
generally fruitless exercise, and because the "children" are defined here by
little more than what they remember, it's difficult to feel you ever really
know them.

One can't blame performers Charlotta Mohlin, Tijuana Ricks, and Rob Lok -
they suavely execute what they're given, and work hard to bring the show to
life. But they all read as too mature, too sophisticated to need to regress
into their pasts to find satisfaction: You never feel they're becoming
their remembrances as much as playing them, which somewhat fractures the
play's fragile, fabulistic façade.

This is forgivable, though - after all, how often is memory itself flawless?
We're often more taunted by what we forget than by what we easily recall,
and it's in this way that Three Children tantalizes with what it attempts
but doesn't get quite right. Even so, the play's unique sound and haunting
beauty won't allow recollections of it to escape your mind for a good while
to come.

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The Unofficial New York Yale CabaretThree ChildrenThrough November 21
Running Time: 75 minutes with no intermission
Second Floor Cabaret at Bennigan's, 771 Eighth Avenue at 47th StreetPerformances at 8 pm. Doors open at 6:30 pm for Food and Drink, served with no minimums.
Tickets online and current Performance Schedule: Theatermania